The American Anti-Imperialist League
Chicago was the first city in the middle west to engage in public controversy on the issue of "Imperialism." On April 30, 1899, the Central Music Hall was secured for a "Liberty Meeting," which had for its purpose "to protest against American Imperialism, and especially against the attempt of the United States to subjugate by force the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands." The call for the meeting was signed by 466 persons. Among them were such well-known figures as Henry Wade Rogers, President of Northwestern University; Professor Edward Hermann Von Holst of the University of Chicago; Miss Jane Addams, the most famous social reformer among American women; Jenkin Lloyd Jones, independent, minister, editor, lecturer; Edwin Burritt Smith, a lawyer, reformer; Graham Taylor, professor of "Christian Sociology" at the University of Chicago; Professor William Gardener Hale; Professor James Lawrence Laughlin; Professor Paul Shorey; President James Burrill Angell of the University of Michigan; and Louis F. Post, editor of the Chicago Public,(1) who fifteen years later became Assistant Secretary of Labor in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
Henry Wade Rogers presided over the conference, and Edward Leslie Smith acted as its Secretary. A hundred vice-presidents were listed for the meeting. The Rev. J. W. Fifield acted as chaplain, and it was evident that the sincerity and fervor which Anti-Imperialists felt against the cause of imperialism took the form almost of a religious zeal.
The presiding officer in his opening address reiterated the purpose of the gathering, -- "to express our convictions on a great public question which concerns the duty, the welfare and the honor of our country." (2) Thus was again heard an appeal for the expression of individual convictions on the subject. The anti-imperialist movement provided an outlet for the feelings and beliefs of those Americans who could not passively accept the decision of the majority upon an issue which they believed to be of fundamental, political, and moral significance. This group were conscious of the sneers that were heard in many quarters calling their opinions seditious. Of this accusation, Henry Wade Rogers said: "Some of those who differ with us in opinion and who are intolerant of all opposition may accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. This is the answer one is given when he ventures to call in question the wisdom of the course now being pursued." Recognition of President McKinley's sincerity of convictions as to the necessity of his "imperial policy" was granted. "We recognize the honesty and sincerity of the President of the United States, and we do not for a moment call in question the rectitude of his intentions," Mr. Rogers declared. "We are not here to discredit his administration nor to embarrass him in the performance of his duty." (3)
It was again stated that the anti-imperialists should not be confused with the mere political opponents of the McKinley administration. Their activities were not confined to criticising President McKinley, but they were against imperialism, against the acquisition of colonies abroad, a step which they believed dangerous to the existence and the future of the United States as a nation, and to the happiness and welfare of its citizens. Mr. Rogers denied the power of the United States to make the Filipinos subjects against their will, and therefore, he reasoned that the people of the Islands had the right to resist the attempt of the United states to extend its sovereignty over them. In an extreme way, he took the position of denying entirely even the international right of the United States to acquire the Philippines by conquest from, and by the treaty negotiated with, Spain. Mr. Rogers declared: "We deny that the United States possesses the Philippines. We have not taken them and the people who inhabit them are not subjects, and they are not in rebellion against our rightful rule over them. We have not yet embarked upon the policy of imperialism, and may God forbid that we ever shall." (4)
It was at this Chicago "Liberty Meeting" that for the first time a body of anti-imperialists officially advocated that the Philippines be made a protectorate of the United States. Mr. Rogers, denying the legal and constitutional right of America to make the Philippines a colony, in the same breath recognized the existence of the fact that actually the Islands were in the hands of the United States. What was to be done with them? He proposed the following:
"We cannot return the Philippines to Spain. We cannot surrender them to any European or Asiatic state or allow them to be treated as a football among nations. But the United States can put an end to the war of conquest by suspending hostilities, by declaring to the nations that it assumes a protectorate of the Philippine Islands against foreign aggression, and by calling upon the natives to establish their own internal government. When that experiment has failed, if fail it should, it will be time enough to consider what should then be done." (5)
Even the most radical of the anti-imperialists seemed to be at a loss as to what was to be done with the Philippines. The return of the Islands to Spain was unthinkable; to give them complete independence without the aid and support of the United States was fraught with obvious dangers. The Archipelago had not had any previous experience with democratic or, for that matter, any other form of self-government. Military faction might control the new government were the Philippines to be made independent. It was feared also that because of lack of experience and the means of self-defense, the islands might become an easy prey to ambitious powers desiring colonies in the Far East. Germany showed signs of interest and opposition to America's occupation of the Philippines. Actions of a powerful German fleet which were interpreted as unfriendly to the United States following the battle of Manila Bay had been checked only by the presence and attitude of English war vessels. (6) Japan was a growing power, emerging successfully and ambitiously from her centuries of seclusion. With these problems in mind, what ought to be done with the Philippines consonant with the traditions, the honor and the democratic principles of the United States?
To the anti-imperialists, there was but one answer to this question: Allow the Filipinos to frame a government of their choice, fitted to their needs and their happiness, and protect them from outside interference while they are establishing themselves as a nation. Admiral Dewey's telegraphic report to the Secretary of War on June 1898, saying, "In my opinion these people are far superior in their intelligence and more capable of self-government than the natives of Cuba, and I am familiar with both races," was largely responsible for the belief of the anti-imperialists in the capacity of the Filipino people to establish a government of their own. If the inhabitants of the Islands should fail to do so, it would then be the duty of the United States to take matters into her own hands. But the Filipinos must first be given the chance to prove themselves capable or incapable of establishing and maintaining an independent government.
The Philippine-American War, as the Filipinos called the conflict between themselves and the United States army in the Philippines, or the Philippine Insurrection, as the American government preferred to call it, had been going on for four months at the time of the Chicago Liberty meeting. This struggle was interpreted by the anti-imperialists to mean that the islanders were fighting for their liberty, refusing subjection to American sovereignty. The resistance of the Filipinos, their American friends declared, was a refusal to recognize the power of Spain to transfer them to the United States. The conflict was a protest against such action.
Reports of the struggle between the two forces with their accompanying stories of cruelty and retaliation, were received with conflicting emotions in the United States. Some Americans felt indignant against the islanders, and called them and their leaders,"robbers", "half-castes", "Indians", "barbarians" and so forth. On the other hand, there were Americans who believed that the Filipinos were not the wild tribes they were represented to be, and who were shocked at their "slaughter" by the American army. These few were found in the ranks of the anti-imperialists, who sympathized with the Filipinos and felt that they were an impoverished and oppressed people desperately fighting against a superior foe for their homes and freedom.
This conflict of feelings aroused by the struggle in the Philippines caused "patriotism" to be defined by each American party to fit its case. The "imperialists" called upon it and declared that the war in the Philippines could be terminated only by the complete submission of those who opposed the supremacy of the American flag in the Islands. They appealed to the emotions of the American people by picturing the cruel deaths of the sons of America imposed by a barbaric foe. Those who sympathized with the pathetic struggle of a weak people to retain the homeland they believed rightly their own, replied by saying: "'Patriot' used to mean a man who was willing to die for the freedom of his country; now it would seem to mean in this country the willingness of a man to die that the freedom of a remote fellow-being may be taken away from him." (7)
Jenkin Lloyd Jones declared that the Philippine American struggle was not one of force, for physically the United States could easily establish physical supremacy over its foe. The only debatable questions about the Philippine policy arose from its ethical and religious phases, the propriety of taking and ruling by force. "1000 to 2000 islands which now hold nine-million and more people." (8) He appealed to the moral courage of the American people to haul down the flag in the Philippines in the name of patriotism, saying: "And so, friends, as patriots, as those who love the flag -- and some of us have followed it into danger and stood by it when it was torn by bullets -- in the name of that flag, we call for that moral courage that dares pull it down when it can thus better represent the rights of humanity where physical courage raised it up." (9)
Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin, answering the claim that the Philippines would become valuable as a new market of American goods, and as a base for United States trade with China and the Far East, declared that the only commercial gain derived from conquest would be to a few at the expense of the workingmen and tax-payers; and that "if we could buy more trade at the expense of human life it would be immoral." Fighting the Filipinos would look to an American nothing more than "as if a great bully should be allowed to go on beating a child until the victim is helpless." In honor and justice to the nation, the country should at once declare that the United States flag was in the Philippines as a symbol of protection, and then "war would cease instantly, not another life would be sacrificed." (10)
Professor Edwin Burritt Smith of Northwestern University said that the vital defect in President McKinley's colonial policy lay in his purpose to extend by force American sovereignty in the Philippines, for such was against the fundamental law of the United States. "Our government," he stated, "rests upon the proposition that the right of self-government is inherent in every people." The Americans, made drunk by the success of the war, were forgetting that the Filipinos might not want to be like them, and might even be happy under different institutions. "We disregard their right to govern, yea, even to misgovern themselves," he declared. (11) Smith further said that President McKinley was mistaking his (McKinley's) passion for power for currents of destiny. Absolutism was endangering American governmental institutions. Such absolutism "cannot be exercised by a government which is merely representative." (12) Zeisler summarized his arguments by applying to the Philippines a poem that William Lloyd Garrison had written years before for the cause of the abolition of slavery.(13) Miss Jane Addams, the first woman to speak in a great anti-imperialist conference, pleaded for world peace, and for the appreciation of moral virtue. She said: "To protect the weak has always been the excuse of the ruler and the tax gatherer, the chief, the king, the baron; and now at last of the white man." This was Miss Addams' answer to the claim of President McKinley and his followers that America was in the Philippines to protect the Filipino people.
Bishop Spalding of Peoria, the last speaker of this gathering, appealed to the public not to be moved by the flattery given by England at America's success in arms. The United States must continue to be the foremost example of republicanism. He said:
We are the foremost bearers of the most precious treasure of the races. In the success of the experiment which we are making the hopes of all the noble and generous souls for a higher life of mankind are centered. If we fail, the world fails; if we succeed, we shall do more for the good of all men than if we conquered all the islands and continents. Our mission is to show that popular government on a vast scale is compatible with the best culture, the purest religion, the highest justice, and that it can permanently endure. (14)
The Committee on Resolutions, headed by Professor William Gardener Hale of the University of Chicago, and helped by Richard T. Crane, Professor Albert H. Tolman, William Kent, and Howard Leslie Smith, presented a resolution which was passed, four (15) voting against it out of an audience estimated at about three thousand. (16) The resolution follows in full:
The frank expression of honest convictions upon great questions of public policy is vital to the health and even the preservation of representative government. Such expression is, therefore, the sacred duty of American citizens.
We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it is now necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We still maintain that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. We insist that the possible subjugation of a purchased people is "criminal aggression" and disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our government.
We honor our soldiers and sailors in the Philippine Islands for their unquestioned bravery and we mourn with the whole nation for the American lives that have been sacrificed. Their duty was obedience to orders; our duty is diligent inquiry and fearless protest. We hold that our government created the conditions which have brought about the sacrifice.
We earnestly condemn the policy of the present national administration in the Philippines. It is the spirit of '76 that our government is striving to extinguish in those islands: we denounce the attempt and demand its abandonment. We deplore and resent the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror, a deep dishonor to our nation.
We protest against the extension of American empire by Spanish methods and demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty begun by Spain and continued by us. We believe that a foolish pride is the chief obstacle to a speedy settlement of all difficulties . Our government should at once announce to the Filipinos its purpose to grant them under proper guarantees of order the independence for which they have so long fought, and should seek by diplomatic methods to secure this independence by the common consent of nations. It is today as true of the Filipinos as it was a year ago of the Cubans that they 'are of right and ought to be free and independent!' (17)
Thus, the anti-imperialists in their first general conference in Chicago voted publicly that they disapproved of the administration's policy with regard to the Philippines, and resolved that the honor and future happiness of the people of the United States, and the vindication of the existence of a true representative democracy, demanded the cessation of hostilities in the war against the Filipinos by a declaration that independence would be given to them. They demanded also that recognition of that independence should be secured, from the powers of the world.
The 'Liberty' meeting was extensively reported in the Chicago newspapers. The Chicago Tribune of May 1, 1899, the Chicago Daily American, the Chicago Evening Post, and the Chicago Record all agreed that about 3000 people attended the anti-imperialist meeting. The convention became almost unruly when the loyalists present began to yell "traitors" and "treason" at the speakers who criticised the McKinley administration. Some of those who disturbed the meeting were even requested to leave, which they did. Most vehement of the Chicago papers against the meeting was the Chicago Tribune, which contained a long editorial denouncing the anti-imperialists. The Tribune attacked the meeting as a disloyal gathering, declaring that "the arguments of the speakers were chiefly drawn from the brochure of the Boston meeting distributed among the audience," and ridiculed the anti-imperialist poetry to which the gathering had listened.
"Nearly all of the speakers" the editorial declared, "set up a man of straw and then manfully knocked it out and were applauded to the echo for their valor. The imperialism and the militarism against which they had all inveighed had no existence except in the imagination of the speakers and such of their audience who allowed the speakers to think and define for them. The fact that nearly all of them deemed it necessary to enter into a detailed statement to show that they are not advocating disloyalty was also one of the significant features of this meeting of protest."
"Perhaps a sufficiently comprehensive characterization of the speeches delivered is that Aguinaldo came in for far more praise than Dewey or President McKinley, and he will probably read these utterances with pleasure should they remember him also when the 'Anti-Imperialist League' sends those speeches to our soldiers in the Philippines."
The Chicago Record in its issue of May 2, 1899 urged that the administration assure the Filipinos of their ultimate independence. The editorial of the Chicago Evening Post was more liberal with the anti-imperialists than the Chicago Tribune, in granting their right to protest. It said:
"In so far as yesterday's anti-imperialist meeting protested against annexation, it was an exercise of a right and a duty. No fairminded man can assail or censure the speakers, though their arguments are open to criticism and correction."
The Evening Post believed that the demand of the anti-imperialists for the cessation of hostilities in the Philippines called for the use of a power not belonging to the President but to Congress, and that inasmuch as Congress was not in session, nothing could be done. A special session was advisable, since the people of the United States had not definitely made up their minds what to do with the islands. It therefore advised the anti-imperialists to appeal to the people.
Judging from the newspaper reports of the meeting, it seems apparent that, while a few were willing to grant the promoters of anti-imperialism their right to their opinion and to protest, the tide of feeling supported the policy of the McKinley administration whatever the consequences might be, and opposition to this policy was generally branded as disloyalty.
1. Chicago Liberty Meeting. April 30, 1899. Page 3.
2. Ibid, 7.
3. Ibid., 10.
4. Ibid., 10.
Mr. Rogers took too extreme a view in this regard, for the Philippines, according to International Law, had been by right of discovery and occupation for almost four centuries a possession of Spain. The insurrection against that authority had not been wholly successful. Therefore when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Spain was still the legal authority in the archipelago. Possessing that sovereign right over it, Spain transferred the islands to the United States by treaty. It is true that the Filipino revolutionists under the leadership of Aguinaldo established a government extensively recognized by the people. This government, however, had been refused official recognition by the United States. It was a de facto government, unrecognized by any nation.
5. Ibid., 11
6. George Dewey, Autobiography.
7. Chicago Liberty Meeting. April 30, 1899.
8. This is an example of the inaccurate information disseminated about the Philippines, especially in the early days of American occupation. The census of 1918 states that there are at least 7,083 islands in the Archipelago (Census of the Philippine Islands: 1918 Vol. 1, p. 70) ; and more authentic report generally gives the population of the Philippines in 1898-1899 as about 7,500,000. The Census of 1903 estimated it as 7,635,426.
9. Chicago Liberty Meeting, April 30, 1899 (Pamphlet) 10.
10. Ibid.: 14-22.
11. Ibid.: 22-27.
12. Ibid., 28.
13. Ibid., 34.
14. Ibid., 47.
15. Ibid., 50.
16. Chicago Tribune, May 1899.
17. Chicago Liberty Meeting, April 30, 1899.
M. Patrick Cullinane, Liberty and Anti-Imperialism, July 14, 2007.